Therapeutic Assessment Efficacy: A Meta-Analysis

Therapeutic Assessment is a brief semistructured and collaborative psychological intervention developed by Stephen E. Finn (1996, 2007). In Therapeutic Assessment, the assessor and clients are collaboratively involved in all the phases of the process and psychological tests are used as “empathy magnifiers” in order to promote positive change throughout an assessment. Over the years, many authors have tested the efficacy of Therapeutic Assessment procedures in different contexts and have concluded that Therapeutic Assessment is well-suited for use with a broad array of clients. Despite some studies documenting the benefits of Therapeutic Assessment, results of individual studies have not been meta-analytically analyzed. Therefore, we performed a series of three-level meta-analyses to examine the efficacy of Therapeutic Assessment with adult clients. We included nine studies with 42 dependent variables, grouped into three types of outcomes: treatment process (6 studies, 18 nonindependent variables), clients’ symptoms (6 studies, 17 nonindependent variables), and clients’ self-enhancement (5 studies, 7 nonindependent variables). The results revealed statistically significant effects for each outcome, treatment process: g =.46, 95% CI [.33;.59]; p <.001; clients’ symptoms: g =.34, 95% CI [.06;.63]; p =.021; clients’ self-enhancement: g =.37, 95% CI [.05;.69]; p =.029. Moderator analyses also suggested that Therapeutic Assessment is resilient, since supervision, the inclusion of more Therapeutic Assessment elements, and additional hours of intervention do not impact substantially its outcomes. These results suggest that the most important aspect of Therapeutic Assessment may be its underlying philosophy and values, and not so much the exact way in which it is implemented.